Chapter 181 Defeated

There were less than 1,000 soldiers on the south wall, and Ding Zhuang was much less, so Niu Youtian only deployed two barracks in the south of the city to block the gate, and after Zhang Hu came back, he also set the west of the city as the main direction of attack, but he transferred another 3,000 auxiliaries to the south gate to build fortifications. There are a lot of flags, and the momentum is not small, in fact, everyone knows that these tricks can't blind the defenders at all - the high city walls have an incomparable vision advantage, and you can see at a glance where the main attack is and where is the containment cooperation. The original intention of Zhang Hu and his men was that it was better for the defenders to escape from the east, and the south wall was just a little bit of a look, and it was impossible for the defenders to attack from here - if this was the case, then they couldn't ask for it: as long as the two battalions dragged on for a while with the cooperation of the auxiliaries, Zhang Hu would not be less than half an hour to lead the main force to kill!

But...... Deserters are all over the mountains, and smoke rises from the camp in the distance, what is going on?

If it is a counterattack by the defenders of the South Gate...... Not to mention that the communist forces in the city are so ordered, and the western wall has been in full swing since the morning, and it is impossible to divide the troops - the south has obviously started a cooperative feint attack at the same time! Even if the dog officers and soldiers went crazy and opened the door to counterattack, the sons and daughters must have resisted while sending people over to deliver the letter. Zhang Hu has personally seen that many fortifications have been built less than a mile away from the south wall, and if there are fewer officers and soldiers who counterattack, they will be sent to death, even if one or two thousand, no, two or three thousand come out, and more than four thousand of them can go into battle, no matter how bad they are, they can firmly contain the dog officers and soldiers in front of the fortifications, how can they be defeated all of a sudden, and collapse without any warning?

The old camp base of the army is located in the Xinghua camp. Several Sichuan military camps had just returned and were still resting in the old camp to recover their strength, and Fang Ge himself brought his personal guards over to guide the Buyin Gate formation. The situation was urgent, Zhang Hu hurriedly asked Fang Ge to go back to gather and reorganize the army, and at the same time instructed the auxiliaries to pull out a few lines of defense against horses, and put all the reserves in his hands behind the defense line to form a phalanx as thick as possible: once the rout was diverted, the phalanx could be slightly spread out to the two wings and then it could be driven up against the pursuers.

At this time, the guys who were playing with the western wall also noticed the fugitives turning around in the southwest corner, and everyone including the soldiers stopped attacking, and the officers at all levels were loudly giving orders to shrink the front and move closer to the headquarters commander's banner.

The defeat was like a mountain.

The crowd was getting closer and closer, and the dust in the distance obscured all the vision, and it was impossible to see how many pursuing officers and soldiers there were. Even if the morale is high, there is no sluggishness of field fortifications, and it is difficult to stop the tens of thousands of people rushing to flee with only a few sparse and thin rejection horses and existing troops, not to mention that more than half of the soldiers are scattered in front of the city to supervise the siege of the people with the auxiliaries - those soldiers and auxiliaries began to move closer to each other under the orders of the officers to assemble and return to the defense, and the tens of thousands of people who were forced to attack the city by their steel swords finally saw a glimmer of life to escape, and rushed to flee in the opposite direction. Many people fled to the banks of the Yellow River to the north, and many more threw down their sticks and ladders, ran to the west wall with their hands open and cried, and ran to the edge of the trench and bowed to the ground, allowing the feathered arrows of the defenders on the wall to shoot the people around them and no longer getting up, tearfully complaining loudly about their misfortunes and grievances.

"Brother Tiger, it's enough to resist it, withdraw it." Niu Youtian leaned over and said anxiously.

Of course, Zhang Hu was unwilling. Therefore, he ignored Niu Youtian, clamped his legs between the horse's belly, and rushed towards the attacking troops who were slowly retreating towards him, shouting and shouting orders to the officers again and again, asking them to lead the team to turn to the south, go against the rout of the friendly army, resist the pursuers behind, and buy some time for himself - as long as the old party can lead the team to arrive in time, together with the reserves in his own hands and Niu Youtian, there are at least five or six thousand soldiers with good physical strength, and the auxiliary soldiers are more than 10,000, as long as the front can withstand a little for a while, wait for these new forces to drive up, It is not yet known who will kill the deer!

In terms of accuracy and ease of use, a crossbow is much better than a bow and arrow. It's only been a few days, and if you practice bows and arrows, newcomers may not be able to guarantee that the arrows will hit the target, and Li Jinzhu has already shot two more thieves today. There were surging heads in front of him, but at the moment, Jin Zhu was only looking for a crossbow machine halfway, and he didn't have the shooting enthusiasm of the archers at all. Because he was born in a military family, Li Jinzhu's fate can only be to be a soldier. said to be a soldier, in fact, he was working as a coolie in Xuanwuwei's military camp, and when he heard that a thief had killed him, the commander stuffed a knife into his hand, so Jin Zhu became a glorious Ming sword and shield soldier. After playing with the crossbow for a few days, Jin Zhu actually developed a sense of professional pride in his heart: it was troublesome to wind up and aim, and he was reluctant to waste his precious shooting opportunity on the unthreatening people. Our crossbowmen, it's best to pick an enemy general with a tassel on his helmet, no matter how bad it is, you have to put down an armor, no armor target? Hehe, the archers only care about the targets - for us crossbowmen, that's air!

More than a dozen enemy horsemen galloped towards the western wall, and both guys had tassels on their helmets!

Of course, the target in the gallop is not easy to shoot, and the distance is a little farther, but it is a thief general who is a foot tall, and it is worth a try! Li Jinzhu already knew that he had to reserve an advance amount for shooting moving targets, so he flattened the crossbow machine and held his breath, aiming at the seven or eight inches in front of the horse's head and detaining the machine bracket.

The crossbow bolt slashed into the air, nailed into his left shoulder at once, and Zhang Hu fell off the horse with a scream, and his right foot was still stuck in the stirrup. Fortunately, Niu Youtian followed closely and hurriedly grabbed the reins of Zhang Hu's mount, if he was a moment late, his tiger brother would probably be dragged to death by the mount under Kaifeng City. Zhang Jiucheng and another guard climbed off the horse and ran over to help Zhang Hu - fortunately, Zhang Hu was wearing the mountain pattern armor issued by the Ming army's generals above the third grade, and the middle arrow happened to be the place where the two pages of armor overlapped, and it seemed that the arrow was not more than an inch into the flesh, so it should be no big deal. Zhang Jiucheng said, "Dashuai endure a little", and held the arrow shaft with both hands and broke it with a forceful pinch - this is a standard battlefield arrow wound rescue operation, and too long the arrow shaft will bring great inconvenience and pain to the actions of the injured. At the same time, the guards of General Zhang Niu and the second general set up their mounts to hide behind their horses, took off the small round shield on their backs and blocked them in front of the three to provide cover for them. This small group of men attracted the attention of the defenders' archers, who took aim and fired at them. But the guards all held their mounts sideways in front of them, and only two or three horses ran away neighing in pain from arrows, but no one was hurt. Several people worked together to push Zhang Hu onto the horse again, sandwiched him between the two horses, and ran down in the direction of the old camp in the west.

Li Jinzhu, who has a high level of understanding, is a halfway monk after all. The regular crossbowmen of the Ming Dynasty often hung a leather bag around their waists, put a piece of silk cotton in it, and then filled it with arsenic, dog shit, pig urine, and women's menstrual blood...... In short, if you think that something is the most "poisonous", you can replenish it at any time, and dip the crossbow arrow twice in it before winding it - if so, although it may not be able to kill Zhang Hu, the wound infection will definitely suffer a lot more.

Several managers have escaped, so what's the point? The exhausted attacking troops under the city took advantage of the fact that the rout was still a hundred and ten zhang away from them, and they had no intention of fighting, and fled in the direction where Zhang Dashuai and Deputy Marshal Niu left. The soldiers behind the rejecting line have seen everything, who is willing to stay here and wait for death? Let out a shout, turn around and run away.

The defenders on the wall could see clearly that there were only three or four thousand of their own pursuers who had turned the southwest corner, and most of them were unarmoured! At this time, Guan Hetong Zhi Sang Yourong (the word Yaozu), who was in charge of the command of the south wall, ran to the west wall out of breath, and everyone knew what was going on.

As usual, early this morning, as soon as the cannon on the west side rang out, the thieves on the south wall launched a feint attack at the same time. Both the attackers and the defenders were fighting as if they were dealing with errands, but while fighting the defenders, they found that a group of men and horses had quietly sneaked in from the east. Although it is too far to see clearly, judging from the flaming red military flag, there must be reinforcements! The thieves outside the city did not have the advantage of the view on the wall, and they were still unaware until this group of people sneaked into the left and right of Lixu, and they were all shouting and shouting without any effort. In order to attract the attention of the thieves, Sang Yourong and the guerrilla Gao Qian concentrated all their firepower in front of the city gate, smashed out an open area, and then ventured to open the door, pulling out all the hundreds of people who were on leave, and posing as if they were going to counterattack. The thieves were really attracted, and the whistles in the thieves' formation came and went, and the officers were all beckoning their subordinates to form a formation to intercept. Unexpectedly, just after forming a formation, the troops who left the city quickly retreated before they reached the edge of the trench. The thieves thought that the defenders were cowardly, so they began to charge, and before they could rush to the edge of the trench again, the reinforcements had already driven to the shack camp full of the old and weak families left behind and began to kill people and set fire!

In order to block the possible counterattack of the delayed defenders, the low walls, trenches, and deer barricades built by the thief auxiliaries all faced the north, and they were completely useless at the moment. The smoke was billowing from the fire in the old nest, the thieves were rushing to escape, Zhang Hu and several other main generals were on the west wall, the strength of the two war camps here was already weak, and there was no general who could hold the scene. The officers shouted through their voices before they gathered some of their subordinates to come back to help, but they didn't expect the four hundred defenders to take advantage of the situation under the leadership of Gao Qian, and they didn't know which one shouted "defeated" and blew up the battalion, and the soldiers fled west with the auxiliaries and their families in a daze. In order to further expand the results of the battle, Gao Qian first went south to join the reinforcements, and then pursued the fleeing enemy to the west. It was only at this time that they knew that it was Wei Shengyu of Lanyang (now Lankao) Governor County and several county dignitaries of Chenliu, Tongxu, and Qi Counties who had been killed. When the last three county lords were driven out of the county seat by Fang Ge, they all took one or two hundred subordinate officials Ding Zhuang to Lanyang one after another, and Wei Shengyu was leading the crowd to strengthen the Yellow River embankment. When he saw his three colleagues, Wei Zhixian immediately thought that instead of being driven out of the county by thieves and waiting for the court to be guilty, it was better to simply use the excuse of protecting King Zhou Chitose and pull the ready-made 3,000 migrant workers to Kaifeng to help in the war - it is a crime for Lanyang to defend but not to keep it, but if we are concerned about the court, we simply don't keep it and take the initiative to protect the prince...... That's a big deal! The high city wall was already in sight, but the thieves in the east did not leave any soldiers, so they touched all the way. Seeing that there was a lively fight here in Nancheng, the thieves camp was full of old and young thieves and had no defensive strength, so they simply killed them from behind!

Under normal circumstances, not to mention that the three thousand people of Mrs. Wei were against two battalions of soldiers and three thousand auxiliaries, even one battalion of five hundred armor could beat them all over the ground. However, the army's heart was chaotic, and he couldn't see that the people who were killed were all unarmored Ding Zhuang, and Gao Qian behind him was so aggressive, Zhang Hu's soldiers were defeated without a fight, and the crowd of people who were rushing to flee for their lives all over the mountains and fields rushed Zhang Hu to the west.

Yang Zhongguo, who had been holding his breath to cut people, was unwilling to give up this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and he must not let the fleeing enemy breathe and assemble, and at that moment led himself and Mu Dengke and Jiang Shide's 100 personal guards to chase the enemy, and the deputy general Yuan Ping, the general Wu Yi, and the guerrilla Zhang Dechang led the infantry soldiers on the west wall to also kill.